Japanese art phenom Takashi Murakami has brought his wares to the Brooklyn Museum for a retrospective exhibition. The massive installation revisits older work dating back over 15 years, which allows new fans of his Superflat styling a rare opportunity to see some earlier work they might never experience otherwise.

This is just PART of the massive Mr. Pointy sculpture during the installation process. I honestly can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to work in Murakami’s studio. Probably something along the lines of Willy Wonka meets Dr. Seuss meets Nigo on acid. Beyond that, I can’t imagine then entrusting my work to be transported and installed by anyone besides myself. I mean, imagine if this sculpture met a similar fate as this one. Epic fail indeed.

Here’s a cool artsy closeup of that same base to put on your Myspace page or make your wallpaper. Pretend you were really there! The details here are pretty wild. I can only imagine the time put into this. I mean, I can barely concentrate on important things like dinner, reading the news, and playing SKATE for more than half an hour at a time. This took at least twice that long I’d imagine.

Kinda hard to believe this dude, seen here in boring sweater and a half tucked collar a la Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine, created that piece behind him, also seen here in every color imaginable and probably a few that aren’t. Take note, it is indeed possible to make an impact on art and fashion without dousing yourself in highlighter ink camouflage.

Speaking of fashion, you probably know Murakami has worked with Louis Vuitton recently, and if you didn’t well, he did. Anyway, for the opening of this exhibit, there were street vendors set up outside the museum hawking authentic Murakami and LV gear not unlike the homies all over the rest of New York. Imagine being the poor sap rolling up expecting to pay for an unoriginal fake (ha!) for your girl and find out the actual price.

Here’s more of the unpacking efforts that took place before the opening. This is the sort of view that even those lucky enough to see art like this in person don’t often get. Next time you’re blown about shipping costs for that BBC shirt you scored on Ebay, imagine what something like this probably cost. PS That shirt is probably fake, sorry!

The Murakami exhibition runs through July 13 and is $10 for adults. For directions and other information, check out the Brooklyn Museum online. This is more than worth an out of state trip if you live even remotely close, events like these don’t come around very often. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 1:30 am and is filed under Art, Accessories, Lifestyle Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.